Posts tagged uk

I did a double take when I saw this sign in a small English town:

Fortunately, Amos was with me, and so I had another speaker of non-British English to ponder it with. Was it some kind of play on zebra crossings? Did they have gorilla crossings too? I was reminded of an old joke from my childhood “if one can, toucan!” I think it was in a fruitloops commercial although I can’t find it now. Instead, here’s a can opened, called the “One Can Toucan” for your entertainment

We thought we were making a silly joke, but the toucan crossing is actually called this because it’s wide enough for cyclists to use as well as pedestrians (the two can cross!). As though that wasn’t already amusing enough, they also have Pelican Crossings and Puffin Crossings. Pelican crossings were earlier called Pelicon Crossing – Pedestrian light controlled Crossing. Puffin crossings are pedestrian user friendly intelligent crossings.

The same stretch of road as my toucan crossing above also has puffin and pelican crossing set ups further along, which will now become stable fixtures in future tours of the neighbourhood.

I imagine this post will be the first in an occasional series on my adventures in British English.

For posts about my experiences in Singapore before this check out the #Singapore tag on the site.

It’s been almost a year since I moved to Singapore, and so it’s time to pack up the postdoc caravan once again. This time I’ll be moving to the UK for two years to do a postdoc at SOAS funded by the ELDP. I have had a great year at NTU, and I’m excited to continue my working with the Kagate community in Nepal.

Of course Superlinguo will keep rolling on. Expect less Singlish and more anecdotes based around me watching the BBC.

I was supposed to spend the next two weeks in Nepal, working on a project that I was really excited about and attending a conference. While I would love to be able to see my friends, it’s unfair to burden the country with another person who isn’t directly helping get the place back on its feet. I will definitely be there by early 2016 though.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be running a few final posts about language and life in Singapore.